Mount St. Helens

[Chreteau]

Scientists predict eruption at St. Helens
Courtesy of USA TODAY

SEATTLE (AP) — The flurry of earthquakes at Mount St. Helens intensified further Thursday, and one scientist put the chance of a small eruption happening in the next few days at 70%.

Jeff Wynn, chief scientist at the U.S. Geologic Survey's Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., said tiny quakes were happening three or four times a minute. Larger quakes, with magnitudes of 3 to 3.3, were happening every three or four minutes, he said.
(Related graphic: More on Mount St. Helens)

New measurements show the 975-foot lava dome in the volcano's crater has moved 2.50 inches to the north since Monday, Wynn said.

"Imagine taking a 1,000-foot-high pile of rocks and moving it 2.50 inches. For a geologist, that's a lot of energy," Wynn said.

Wynn estimated there was a 70% chance the activity will result in an eruption.

Click here for the full story.

Mount St. Helens has had a huge impact in my life. The last time it erupted following a 5.1 earthquake, on May 18th, 1980 at 8:32 a.m. (PDT), I was six years old, a couple months shy of turning seven. My parents were working nights on a contract job in a small town near the mountain.

I remember we were in the car, leaving that morning for home when the mountain erupted. I remember my father, stubborn as always, wasn't going to give up so every few miles we stopped and he refilled the windshield washer fluid. At one point my parents poured coffee from a thermous into the reservoir, having run out of water and everything use useful. Finally the ash had clogged up our engine so bad, we found a garage to fix the problem, and waited out the worst of the falling ash in a nearby restaurant.

Although those are the extent of my childhood memories that day, the mountain had a far greater impact on my family.

Fifty-seven people were killed in that eruption, and twenty-one bodies have never been recovered. My aunt had also been returning home that day when she and my nephew, Ryan, who was just an infant at the time, were involved in a traffic accident as a result of the falling ash. Ryan was one of the fifty-seven people killed that day, and the resulting trauma drove my aunt into a cocaine and alcohol addiction from which she's never recovered.

A friend of my family's, as close to an adopted uncle as one can have, was on top of the mountain that day. When it erupted, he and his friend climbed into a jeep and hurried to make it off the mountain. Our family friend made it, although is friend was killed and is one of the twenty-one missing. To this day he still has that jeep, and refuses to sell it. Who can blame him? That jeep saved his life.

For some, Mount St. Helens is an awesome example of Mother Nature's power. For others, it's a reminder that life is something to be valued and not wasted.

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Psalm 23:4a (NIV)